


from your window to the pitch black street

by DrowningInStarlight



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Bonding over grief, Cairo arc, Developing Friendships, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Rusty Quill Gaming Girls Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-07 22:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21225095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningInStarlight/pseuds/DrowningInStarlight
Summary: Sometimes the world ends, and then it keeps ending. Apocalypse isn't supposed to have a plural, but Aziza al-Tahan is dead, and Brock Rackett is dead, andthe world keeps ending.Or, a moment of friendship and sweet things in an unkind world.Written for the Rusty Quill Gaming Girls Week day two: breeze/ripple/branches.





	from your window to the pitch black street

**Author's Note:**

> title from the kids aren't alright by fall out boy.

The Al-Tahan estate was wide and sprawling. The paths were neatly defined, edges lined with stones, and Sasha trod them carefully, the gravel almost soundless under her practiced feet. The beds rising in tidy layers on each side of the path were full of dry, dusty sand and spiky plants she didn’t have names for. She didn’t exactly have names for many plants, of course, except for the weak, pale weeds that clawed their way through stone to sprout in Other London. And there was no dandelions or herb robert here, just low growing trees and rocks arranged artfully. But even she could tell it was messier than it was intended to be. Sand covered _ everything, _and there were plants torn and scratched by sand, or lying uprooted on the paths, drying up in the sunlight. She was careful to skirt around them, just in case. She didn’t think Hamid’s family were the type to have killer plants in their gardens, but when it came to rich people you could never be too careful, and she really didn’t want a repeat of Kew. 

It was quiet out here. The house was full of arguing, or people being stiff and polite to each other, a balancing act of tension and words left too long unsaid. There was grief, too, of course, fueling the fires of anger, and it was too soon for Sasha to witness the effect of the loss of a sibling without feeling the sting of hearing a mechanized voice telling her about the childhood games only one other person in the entire world was supposed to know about. 

(Brock was dead. Aziza was dead. Maybe Sasha, too, was dead. So she’d walked out of the side door of the Al-Tahan household, and into the sand.) 

She was a good distance from the house, now. She could have gone up on the roof again, or into Cairo city, but she hadn’t wanted too. Not really. She didn’t want to go too far from the others, but she couldn’t bear to be with them either, so she’d walked out of the side door and wondered if this was what having a family felt like. 

The terrain was soft and swelling, rising and falling gently. She hadn’t forgotten the suffocating terror of drowning in sand, but here the desert appeared almost gentle. Tamed, despite the traces of chaos. It was so unlike the damp, cold city that had been all she’d known for so, so long, and she stared around her, lost and free and dying-- living, living, _ living, _even as her blood wouldn’t stop spilling out of her veins. 

Maybe she would die here. The sky was huge, a dull, sandy blue above her. There were worse places to die, she decided. 

Over the next rise, there were glass buildings she recognised as greenhouses. These were as big as the ones she’d seen at Kew, shiny brass and sand-scored glass, and she didn’t even have to pick the lock to get in. The glass door slid open when she pushed it, sand scraping in its runners. 

It was humid, inside, condensation collecting on her clothes immediately. She tugged the door shut behind her, and took a few cautious steps between the neat rows of raised beds. Some of the plants were small, barely hints of green in the soil, and others were huge and tangled over complicated arrangements of canes. It was a world away from Other London, a universe of green and growing that the sunken city had never even dreamt of. She was careful, still, not to touch, half out of fear of what these plants might do, and half out of fear that she might ruin them somehow. She felt awkward and out of place, but she knew no one could see her here. The plants didn’t move, didn’t ask, didn’t stare. They didn’t try to drag her out of her camouflage and into the light. They just grew, quiet and steady. The gravel crunching ever so slightly under her boots was the only sound. 

At the end of the row, she found trees. Someone else might have known what they were, but Sasha just knew they were tall and thick, branches forking and twisting. She’d cut her teeth on brick walls, and she didn’t even hesitate at trees. She was up off the ground in a heartbeat. 

It was a good vantage point. She tucked her feet under herself, holding the tree trunk loosely with one arm, and twisting out a knife with the other. She didn’t really think anyone was going to be out here, but watching was second nature to her, a safety net for her to fall back into. She cast her eyes around, taking in the greenery growing below, heavy with red berries, the butterflies flitting from flower to flower, the sunlight filtering in through the scratched glass surrounding them-- 

Distantly, the sound of the door opening reached her. She froze against the trunk. 

It took a few minutes before she actually saw anyone. A halfling, dressed in a somber grey skirt, walking slowly. For half a moment she thought it was Hamid, but then she realised, no. It was Saira. 

She was looking at the flower beds, but she didn’t seem to be actively taking anything in, just wandering because it was better than staying still. Sasha didn’t move for a long, long moment, but then all at once she leapt down from the tree, landing with a deliberate crunch on the gravel path. Saira looked up sharply, but to her credit, didn’t flinch. 

“Oh, Sasha,” she said. “I didn’t notice you there.” 

“Mm,” Sasha agreed, then remembered people here thought that jumping out at people was rude, rather than just, you know, how you said hello. “Oh. Sorry.” 

“No, no,” Saira said, apparently misunderstanding what Sasha was apologising for. “You’re a friend of Hamid’s, you may go wherever you choose. No one really comes here, anyway. Not anymore.” 

Sasha gave her a questioning look. 

“These were… Aziza, she’d,” Saira hesitated, and it was the first time Sasha had seen her falter. “Aziza adored things that, well, _ grew, _and she’d come here to sing to them--” 

She came to a halt, and Sasha fiddled with her knife awkwardly. 

“I apologise,” Saira said, after a second. “It’s been a… difficult week.” 

“I know the feeling, mate,” Sasha said, with feeling, then, before Saira could ask, she proffered a scrunched up paper bag from the pocket of her jacket. “Want a sherbet lemon?” 

“Sorry?” 

“Sherbet lemon. Got ‘em in London, way back, but they don’t go bad and there’s no blood on them or anything.” 

“I--” Saira began, then took one. “Thank you.” 

“Sure,” Sasha replied, tucking the bag away. “They were… I used to steal ‘em for someone who’s not here to enjoy ‘em anymore. So. Yeah.” 

Saira put the sherbet lemon in her mouth, then looked at Sasha, her gaze intense. Sasha looked down at her knife, and twirled it between her fingers again. 

“Hamid mentioned you’re from Other London?” Saira said eventually, making Sasha look up. 

“What of it?” she responded, wary. 

“Oh, nothing serious,” Saira said, clearly seeing the sudden tension in Sasha’s face. “I was just wondering if you’d ever had fresh strawberries before.” 

“Strawberries? What, the thing Old Joe swears his flavours are, even though we all _ know _it’s rat blood, really--” 

Again, Saira didn’t wince, but she did nod thoughtfully, and led the way a few steps down the path, to where the plants were thick and green. “This,” she said, with the first hint of genuine, simple excitement Sasha had ever heard from her, “Is going to blow your mind.” 

She pulled back some of the leaves to reveal the strawberries growing underneath, nestled in yellow straw, and gestured for Sasha to take one. Still a little wary, Sasha did so. 

“Try it,” Saira urged. “Just don’t mention them to Hamid. One year, he ate so many he was sicker than I’ve ever seen him, _ and _I’ve never seen him touch a strawberry since, despite Aziza--” she stopped. “They were Aziza’s favourites, strawberries.” 

Sasha bit into it._ “Oh,” _ she said. 

“See?” Saira said, with a little bit of a smile. 

“Now I know for _ sure _that Old Joe used blood, no way it was this, this is...”

“Aziza had good taste in fruit,” Saira said, her smile turning a mixture of wry and sad. She spread her arms wide. “Have as many as you like. Just, don’t follow Hamid’s example and eat enough to be actually sick.” 

Sasha bent down to pick another strawberry. Then she straightened suddenly, and thrust the paper bag of lemon sherbets into Saira’s hands gracelessly. She didn’t say anything, but Saira seemed to understand. Aziza was dead, everyone was fighting, and sugar tasted good. Brock was dead, Sasha was dying, and the strawberries were in season. 

“Thank you,” Saira said. Sasha just nodded. There was nothing else she could say.   
  



End file.
